Have you been in counselling before, or maybe had a life-coach and they’ve suggested breathing exercises or 54321. You tried it, but it did nothing or made you feel worse, like you’re failing in some way?
If you have, you’re not alone, or doing it wrong, or too broken, which can be common thoughts when something a professional suggests doesn’t work for you.
In this post I help you understand what might be happening and offer some different ideas that could actually work.
Grounding Techniques
When a professional suggests you use one of the above techniques, what they’re trying to offer is something called Grounding. The purpose of this is to get you back to a place of feeling safe and calm.
Grounding techniques might be suggested for:
- Support with Anxiety
- Anger Management
- Managing Stress or overwhelm
- Help with arguments or conflict
- Coping with depression
Why grounding techniques don’t work for you
A lot of people assume that grounding techniques are for helping people feel calm and that they work for anyone who is not calm. But we actually have different ways of responding to stress, risk and threat, that need the different types of support to come back down so you can feel calm and safety.
The level of stress you’re experiencing also changes what type of support you need.
Responding to stress, anxiety, anger and more
We don’t all respond the same way to the same things, generally there are three ways we respond to stress, risk or danger:
- Social - we try to connect and get support from other people
- Defend – Either by verbally or physically fighting and being scary or by running away
- Camouflage – We try to fit in with our surroundings, by socially blending in or becoming very still and shutdown.
What triggers the above will also be different for each of us. For example one person who feels sad might reach out to a friend, another might get angry and push people away and another might shut down and isolate themselves.
This different way of responding is really important in helping us find the right support to get back to being ok.
Getting back to calm
To find the right kind of support to get back to feeling calm, safe and in control again, we need to identify how in or out of control of your feelings and behaviours you are. We also need to figure out which way of protecting yourself is kicking in.
Here is a fictional example:
Jay has just told their friend, they’ve lost something they borrowed from them. Their friend is angry and wants to know what Jay is going to do to make it better. Jay doesn’t know and isn’t saying anything. Jay feels frozen, sick and it feels like they’re thinking through fog.
Jay is shutdown, camouflaging they don’t need to feel more calm because they aren’t very energised. Instead things Jay can try are:
- Wriggling their fingers
- Sitting up tall
- Standing or looking up
- Clear their throat
- Make a sound, a hum or loud out breath
This tells Jay, they’re safe and they don’t need to hide and everything can come back online.
How can counselling help you?
Finding calm isn’t a one size fits all kind of thing, people just don’t work like that.
In counselling we can find your way back to calm, whether that’s bringing you back down when you’re ready to fight or run away, or energising you when you’re shut down.
We’ll get to know what different types of protective behaviours have what triggers for you, so you can figure it out in the moment. Then we’ll find the right ways for you to have choice over how you respond.
3 steps to getting started
If you’d like to see if counselling is right for you, it just takes three steps
- Book a free
- Have a chat and figure out if we’re a good fit
- Decide if we’d like to work together
To book a free call click here